The Sunday Hangman

17

Zondi knew he was dreaming. He’d meant to say many things to Dorothy Jele, and now he was saying them. He chided her for thinking that a careless mother was necessarily an uncaring one. He reminded her of the sweet fever turning to delirium as the search had drawn closer. He laughed at her virtues as a true Christian woman, a woman who couldn’t be made to tell a lie. She shrieked back that it wasn’t her, wasn’t her. She shrieked and shrieked and coughed and whispered and there was someone standing over him.

He had still to be dreaming. The man wore a lounge suit and there were inflated pigs’ bladders in his hair. His squint transfixed you, his breath was aromatic. Herbs. He was gone again.

Dorothy, Dorothy, Dorothy Jele.

Someone else in the room.

“Have I woken you?” whispered Goodluck Luthuli, “Are my eyes not closed?” Zondi snapped, noticing he’d succumbed to the peevishness of an invalid. “I am sorry, my brother. What time is it? Is the Lieutenant-”

“They have been away the whole afternoon, Sergeant. There is no sign of their return yet. I heard you were restless, so I brought you this.” Luthuli held out a small horn with a wooden stopper. “It is the medicine left by Jafini Bhengu. He was most painstaking in its preparation, and ground up the ingredients to a special fineness. He says it would be better if you went to the nuns’ clinic, but this will bring you relief until then.”

Groggily, Zondi took the horn, uncorked it, and saw that it contained a gray powder. “All afternoon, you say? Then the sun is going down?”

“Soon. Is there anything else you would have brought to you?”

Zondi’s attention had been taken by the way Luthuli was tamping down the tobacco in his cheap black pipe. He glared at the pipe, annoyed by the insistence of its detail: it was the kind with a perforated metal cap which fitted over the bowl, and there was a little silver chain, attached at one end to the pipestem, to keep this cap from getting lost. When he began to hate the pipe, his own delirium seemed not far off.

“A farm is not hard to search. The workers will know all the far corners, and they will also know where they have been forbidden to go. If I-”

“Mamabola is helping your boss, and he is a bright one,” Luthuli said, replacing the silver cap. “Perhaps they visit many farms.”

“Mamabola! That puppy!”

With a grunt, Zondi tried to rise-only to discover he hadn’t the strength to take a grip on the ammunition box beside him … His head reeled and he slumped back.

“You must sleep,” Luthuli coaxed gently, pulling up the blankets again. “I will be in the charge office.”

The door closed. Zondi felt for his gun; it had been taken from him. He went limp. He thought about Dorothy Jele, and remembered how thin the walls of her room had been. Soon he was dreaming again, hopping frantically, seeing his children running fleet down a straight path to the barricades.

“Lieutenant!” shouted Zondi, this time waking himself up.

He fumbled for the medicine horn, tipped the whole lot into his mouth, and turned to the wall. Then his mind became lucid and he began to smile. A moment or two later, he was laughing.

His sophisticated taste buds had just revealed to him the secret of Jafini Bhungu’s success. That gray powder was nothing other than wood ash and aspirin.

“I don’t get it,” said Kramer, as he and Willie finally boarded the Land-Rover. “That place definitely had a feel to it that wasn’t natural.”

“Where’s Nyembezi?” Willie asked Mamabola, who was sitting on the floor in the back.

“He is coming now, boss; he just sprung a leak.”

“Did you get the same impression, Willie?”

They looked back at the wide, low bungalow, at the barn and tractor shed and scattering of outbuildings. The large disused water tank had caused a brief flutter of hope. So had the milking parlor, with its pit between the machines, but by then things had been verging on the ridiculous.

“Can’t say I did, sir. That old cookboy was a bit funny, but otherwise it seemed normal to me. I don’t think he believed we were looking for an escaped prisoner.” And Willie laughed. “How did Mrs. de Bruin take to you going inside?”

“She didn’t bat an eyelid, went on doing her knitting. Of course, what I said was that I wanted to use the bog. Look, she’s still there now; bet she’s watching us.”

A lumpy figure in a black frock went on knitting and swinging gently on a cushioned bench suspended from the verandah rafters. Tortoise-shell spectacles gave a glint.

“Ja, took it all in her stride, asked no questions about the man we were looking for, whether he was a rapist or what. But it was little things, like the keys.”

“Sorry, Lieutenant?”

“When I was going through the rooms, checking the floorboards like you suggested, I noticed that there was a key in every keyhole of every chest, cupboard-or else the thing was open. What I’m getting at is that nothing was locked; I could have gone digging in anything I liked.”

The back door slammed and Nyembezi’s weight settled heavily on the metal seat. Kramer started up the Land-Rover and drove out slowly to the gate, turned left, and began the descent to Witklip. They passed a sign reading M. R. JACKSON-PRIVATE. The next sign they came to was outside Gysbert Swanepoel’s place. Kramer swung in there, just missing a gatepost.

“Hey?” said Willie.

“Best we do one other,” Kramer explained, knowing damn well what he was up to. “If we just do de Bruin’s, that’s a bit of a giveaway.” It was like being in rut.

“But Jackson’s is in between!”

“He’s also at home this afternoon, in all probability, my friend. And not a very nice man, by the sound of it.”

“Hell, I.… Must I come in with you?”

The drive was relatively short and ended at the foot of some concrete steps ornamented with small palms set in tubs made from car tires.

“Must I, sir?” Willie repeated, very jittery, as the Land-Rover’s engine was switched off.

“We’ll make this a quickie,” said Kramer, now committed. “You take the outside, me the in. Tell Mamabola to see the head boy, the induna, and Nyembezi had better stay here with the van. Same prisoner story as before. Got that?”

“Fine; will do.”

“Then spread out, Willie, spread out.”

The door was opened by a shuffling crone with a face straight out of a prune packet.

“Boss Swanepoel not home,” she said, deeply apologetic. “Little missus she lie down.”

“That’s okay, auntie. You see my boy down there?”

“Hau, hau! Po-eesie?”

“Uh huh, police, But you’re not in any trouble. Just you go to him and he’ll explain.”

She hurried off. It was as well Zondi wasn’t around.

Kramer stepped into the house and took a glance into the living room. It had large sash windows and an enormous fireplace. The furniture was old, and so was the carpet; the effect was very homely. A muzzleloader hung over the mantel, pointing at the head of a dead buffalo on the same wall, and, above a homemade bookcase, was a faded world map. There wasn’t a photograph of her anywhere.

The house was very quiet. Every door onto the long passage stood ajar except one. He listened, tried the handle carefully, and found it was locked. But the key was on the outside, so he turned it, waited five seconds, then went in.

A low, green light, filtering through the drawn blinds, transformed a scene of mild chaos into the natural untidiness of a forest clearing. Scattered panties made vivid crinkles of fungi on the tree stump of a stool and around it; tights hung like torn spider web from chairback and mirror; other clothing and pop cuttings littered the floor underfoot, crackling and yielding. There was a faint, fecund forest fragrance, the sickly sweetness that tempts flies into fleshy petals, and the trapped, heavy air was sweat-prickle humid. Over on the far side, on a bank of mussed bedding, a slender figure was lying face down. Kramer circled the end of the bed. Her face was hidden by a fall of blond hair the right length for pigtails. Her arms were straight down at her sides and her hands underneath her. Her skin was tanned to the color of a young doe and there was a sprinkle of freckles on the near shoulder. She was wearing a sleeveless white blouse, a denim skirt which reached to midthigh, and was barefoot. Her legs were long and strong and very smooth. He wanted to touch them.

–

Willie kept as far as he could from the house. He expected the girl to come running out at any moment, followed by the Lieutenant, to accuse him of all the things he’d so often imagined doing to her. It didn’t matter how irrational he knew this notion to be-that’s what he felt. It had him scared and excited and sick to the stomach. He slunk into the vehicle shed and tried to get himself together.

There had been a time, way back in the home when the only rides he ever took were on buses, when he’d been mad keen on motor transport of any sort and had known all the names. But this chance of inspecting a diesel Mercedes saloon at close quarters was one he had no interest in taking. He pushed a finger along its dusty flank and wiped the muck off on an old refrigerator truck.

Then he noticed the blood. A spear-shaped splash on the mounting step at the back. He circled the truck and discovered that the cooling unit had been removed before the last paint job.

Puzzled, he swung back the elaborate latch-which someone had been modifying with a brazing torch-and opened the doors.

Vvvvvvvvvvvv. Flies filled the stinking air, which was like a belch from a hyena. Vvvvv-vvvvvmmm. They settled again to continue their feasting. There was blood everywhere on the ribbed metal floor, and a row of hooks had been screwed into a reinforced strip that ran the length of the thick, insulated ceiling.

“Impofu,” said a grating voice behind him.

With a start, Willie swung round and found Mamabola and the farm’s headboy standing there.

“The induna explains,” said Mamabola, “that this is the conveyance used for the transportation of eland.” He asked the man some questions in Zulu, and then added: “Boss Swanepoel has now fifty head of buck on the poor pastures; no other farmer in this district has so many. Boss de Bruin only twenty-nine and Boss Jackson thirty.”

“Ja, I bloody know,” Willie lied, feeling a terrible fool, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t be interested! How often does the boss shoot them? Doesn’t it matter if they get a bit bad?”

After some mumbling, muffled by the woolen cap the induna held respectfully in front of his mouth, Mamabola came up with a hesitant answer: “He says the white masters in the big cities eat only buck that is rotten.”

“Oh, ja? Tell him to pull the other one!” retorted Willie, looking at his watch. “Do all of them have trucks like this, hey?”

It was no good: Kramer couldn’t leave without seeing what her face was like. He cleared his throat.

She stopped breathing. Her neat rump lifted slightly and a hand appeared stealthily at her side.

“Pa …?”

She propped herself up on an elbow, flicking her hair aside with her right hand, while using the other one to keep her blouse closed. A kitten’s tongue licked the perspiration from her downy upper lip; the large green eyes dilated, not telling her anything. He tingled with an uncanny sense of recognition; it almost frightened him.

“My warrant card,” said Kramer, flipping open his wallet. “I’m a policeman, so don’t catch a panic. We’re looking for-”

“You gave me a scare! I thought it was him back.”

“Sorry, hey? It didn’t seem right not to tell you this boy was around. We’re also telling the servants.”

She smiled and he smiled and that took care of that. Except there was something secret about her smile that had nothing to do with him. He examined her face, still feeling the effects of his initial reaction to it, yet without being able to account in any satisfactory way for why he found it familiar. Perhaps his dream hussy really had looked like that-he couldn’t really remember now; perhaps he’d registered a sharper picture of the passing schoolgirl than he realized. It was true, too, that her face was of a stereotype prettiness, found in every stock character from Bambi to Snow White to beauty queens, and built on the bossed forehead, big eyes, cute mouth, round cheeks, and neat nose of a baby. Very much the sort of face which would cause no resentment among her classmates if she was chosen to play the princess in a school play. And yet it might have been only the eyebrows, with their distinctive curve upward. He needed to look at her a while longer.

“Why was the door locked?” Kramer asked, half guessing her answer.

“He thinks I’ve been naughty.”

“I thought it might be that. And were you?”

She looked down to do up two of her buttons, tightening the fabric so that the swell of her breasts showed; they were as big as shop buns, each with a currant-sized bump in the center. The action seemed unthinking. She giggled.

“It’s the second weekend running I can’t go out. I’m meant to learn this stuff.” She nudged a book on her pillow.

“What about the barbecue tonight?”

“I’m not allowed,” she said with indifference, making a face. “Still, I think they’re boring. You should see the barbecues we have at school sometimes!”

Kramer sat on the edge of the bed, down where her feet were. He was conscious of his own warmth, of her warmth, of the room’s warmth. They mingled together somehow, touching.

“Better games?”

“Hey? Oh, ja, much better. Was that you who came after lunch time?”

“No; just arrived.”

“I thought it was Pa, which just proves it. I wanted to ask him if I could have the radio-but he never takes any notice on purpose.”

She drew back her right foot, scratched at a mosquito bite, and then replaced it so that her toes were gently touching him. She didn’t seem to notice. But he did.

“Your pa has quite a temper, has he?”

“Not really,” she said, appraising him as though wondering what his personality was like. “Pa’s very strict, that’s all. He does nice things, too, like he reads me books, turning it straight into Afrikaans from English sometimes. He’s clever, my pa. Also, he’s promised me a horse if I’m good now.”

Kramer smiled. “What are your chances of getting it?”

Her toes wriggled.

The stimulus wrought a minor change in his circulation. The child had a self-proclaiming sexuality that would probably frighten her half to death if she were aware of it; it came over in the lazy movements of her limbs, in her need for casual contact, in the scent of her. His own awareness of this gave their touching an edge of irresistible tension; he knew he should go now, but couldn’t see the harm in it. Her face was still a mystery to be solved, too, he told himself.

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On who.” She laughed.

Her toes were kneading his thighs like cat paws, taking their rhythm from the rise and fall of her breasts. She was watching him slyly. He couldn’t believe it.

“I know a secret about you,” she said with a smile.

“Which is?” Kramer waited, his blood racing.

“From your eyebrows I can tell your hair’s the same color all over. I’m the same if you look.”

She had drawn her feet up again, shiny knees parted.

“I must go now,” he said, keeping his eyes on her face. “That must be some boarding school you go to.”

“Go on, stay-please. You can see how bored I am.” Her foot came back to lie across his thigh, the toes reaching. Then she gave a little kick.

“Push off, big man!” She giggled. “You’re looking at me like my pa does! I want my horse more than a ride with you, you know. Although I wouldn’t have minded till you did that.”

“Jesus!”

“Can’t take a joke? Now tell me what Pa does, that I’m the lost generation.”

“You’re a whore,” he whispered. “Where did you learn this?”

“That would be telling, hey? Now push off like I said, or I’ll call the girl. I don’t like you anymore.”

“Thank God for that,” said Kramer with icy control. Shaken, he rose and gave her a curt nod, forgetting there were things about himself over which his control was limited. She looked at his loins, saw what her power had conjured, and burst into schoolgirlish laughter. He didn’t move until her face had a sulk on it. Then he walked round the bed and to the door, where he could not help pausing for a last look back. She had rolled over again and was lying very straight, with her hands hidden beneath her.

“Hey, Lieutenant!” Willie called out, beckoning him to the lean-to garage beside the barn. “It just could be something.”

Blinking against the aching brightness of the afternoon, and with his head full of pus, Kramer strode across to see what the excitement was about. He saw a beaten-up refrigerator truck which had been converted to carry game in; one very like it called occasionally at the hotel across the way from the office. In fact, for all it mattered, this could be the same one.

The truck was filthy.

“What could be something?” he managed to say.

“He could be using his one like this-in fact, the induna says there are at least four in the neighborhood. The garage in Brandspruit made them up and-”

“Like this?” Kramer exploded, slamming one of the heavy doors shut. “Jesus bloody Christ almighty! What was the point in getting you to read all Doc’s bumf? A clean death, hey?”

“Whitewashed walls and new rope and scrubbed boards-look at that sodding floor! That’s not just metal on top, but eight inches of bloody insulation underneath. Height? Nine foot? Eight? From the wheels to the top? Eleven?”

“Ach, no!” said Willie, gaining color. “I’m not such a fool. Be fair, sir!”

The kid was right to stand up for himself. Kramer took a deep, silent breath and then turned calmly to the awed black onlookers. “Mamabola and Nyembezi into the van. Tell the induna we’ll be moving on to search for the prisoner down the valley.” Then he said, “Carry on, Willie; I’m listening. My problem was that it struck me like a very messy murder, which isn’t what we’re dealing in at present.”

Willie’s grin was instantly forgiving. “You should have been here when I opened it, Lieutenant, hey? No; my idea was that here could be an ideal vehicle for transporting the bodies in to where he dumps them. In the notes it says that the blood wouldn’t have all drained to the feet if the corpses hadn’t-er-”

“Quote ‘been maintained in a vertical or semivertical position’?”

“Ja, that’s right. There’s another thing, too: nobody notices these trucks moving at night or early in the morning, because of the time the meat markets open.”

“And the loading hours around the hotels and restaurants. De Bruin’s got one of these, you say?”

“A blue one on a Bedford chassis. I didn’t look inside it when we were-”

“Willie,” said Kramer, “I like it.”

“So shall we go back up there?”

“I think the English would say that’s putting the cart before the horse, my friend. And I can guarantee it won’t be in the same condition as this one. God, Swanepoel is a pig.”

“It’s really the induna’s fault. He should have had it cleaned on Tuesday. I told Mamabola to kick his arse for him. But why aren’t we going just to take a look? We didn’t find sod all else there.”

Kramer suddenly knew what he’d felt about the de Bruin homestead. “You’ve put your finger right on it! They had nothing to hide-right? Why not?”

“Because it isn’t them?”

“Because it isn’t there, man! It’s somewhere else. And I think I know how we can find it.”

“Sir?”

“Time to put some pressure on, Willie. Let the bastard know what we’ve come to Witklip for. Either he’ll crack and we’ll see it, or he’ll keep cool and try to sneak away to destroy it-providing he isn’t madder than we realize. As soon as he makes his move, we nail him.”

“What sort of pressure?” Willie asked, as they started back to the Land-Rover. “A Wanted notice?” But he was only joking, as his wink indicated.

“Something subtle. Something to really put on the mental thumbscrews, even if he’s blocked out to the usual pressures. Something he can’t resist reacting to.”

“Quite something,” remarked Willie, very dryly.

“Don’t worry; I’ll think of it.”

Kramer got behind the wheel of the Land-Rover and noted that the sun, which had shone so brightly in his eyes, had touched the edge of the ridge. It would be dark soon. He started up and drove hard to the gate. Incredibly, as he turned away from one of the most regrettable things he’d ever done, he flinched with regret at not having accepted that open invitation. And part of his body said yes, it agreed with him.

The stones rattled loudly against the Land-Rover’s steel plating. Willie was asking him a question, so he leaned over to hear it.

“Was-was his daughter around?”

“Too right, man! Do you know her?”

“Er-not-not really. I’ve seen her a few times.”

“Then you should get in there,” Kramer shouted back, but not loud enough for their passengers to hear him. “Christ, I’ve never seen anything so eager for it! Wants to give it to you on a plate. I nearly got raped, man, and I’m an old granddad compared to you!”

Willie was gripping the crash bar, really coming to life at last. “But she’s only fifteen!”

“Doesn’t matter to her, I can tell you. So why should it matter to you? I think that Jackson kid was bloody lucky to get out of that barn still able to walk. He should complain!”

“You’ve heard about that? I only-”

“Ja; Piet told me last night. But seriously, Willie, my friend, if ever you feel the urge, and the old man’s not around, you have a go and you’ll see what I mean. In the few minutes I was in there, she made sure I saw everything.”

“No! Honest?”

“Honest, a real little nympho. No wonder he’s keeping her away from the barbecue these days.”

This outburst seemed to flush a sickness from Kramer’s soul, but the space it left was immediately taken by a choking self-disgust. He eased up on the throttle, got a Lucky into his mouth, and offered one to Willie.

“Actually, it’s nothing to make jokes about.”

“Uh huh?” Willie said-and not for the first time; he’d made several unconscious imitations already.

“It’s a kind of illness, and has maybe got something to do with having no ma. Or the effect on her when she died. It’s also a fact that kids these days are definitely different, and those boarding schools were pretty wild even in my own day. Did you ever go to one?”

“No, I was always stuck in the boys’ home.”

Kramer flinched again, very tender all round. “The really terrible thing is that she’s got mixed up with someone there who should be locked up.”

“Bloody hell,” said Willie, puffing out his smoke in a flurried blast. “That explains it! Everyone was wondering why that what’s-his-name bloke got the sack. Usually they stay, but one minute he was a house father in the hostel, next minute he was gone, vanished completely from Brandspruit.”

“Who knows?”

“But she was really like that? Willing?”

“In heat,” said Kramer, smiling for an opposite effect. “Shall I tell you what it reminds me of now? Of a time when I had to go through the loony bin in Trekkersburg and some inmates there held up their dresses as I passed. That’s not sex, man. Agreed?”

“Ja, agreed. I like mine hot but not-er-what shall we say?”

Kramer let it die there. Emotionally spent, his mind achieved a new clarity, and he applied himself to the problem of finding the right thumbscrew. Willie drew on his cigarette thoughtfully.

Dust billowed behind them.

“Can I say-” Willie began.

“Go right ahead, providing it’s the case we’re both back on.”

“Not finding anything might also have something to do with me saying the notes were too posh in comparison, and we could be looking for too much.”

“For the last time, man!” This pigheaded quibbling by a credulous bloody teenager, who wouldn’t notice a subtle nuance if you stuck it up his nose, was more than any grown man could be expected to tolerate. Kramer was about to let rip, when he realized how very true this was.

“Blasphemy-do you know that’s what you’re talking?”

“I don’t care, sir. I’ve got to say what I believe.”

“In that case,” replied Kramer, looking up at the great white stone passing high above them on the left, “if you are prepared to be as principled in public, then I think we’re ready to roll, Willie, my lad.”